How Can This Unique Nurse Identifier Benefit CNOs?

The NCSBN ID can be used in a central database to keep track of nurses and build the workforce, according to the NCSBN.

Amid the nursing shortage, health systems are struggling to recruit and retain qualified nurses who want to continue being a part of the industry.

Part of this equation is ensuring that nurses have career opportunities available to them and options to advance their education. While health systems can work on giving them these resources, it's also up to CNOs and other nurse leadership to take advantage of the systems and tools that are already in place to build a strong workforce.

According to Jason Schwartz, director of member outreach at the National Council of State Boards of Nursing (NCSBN), and Matt Sterzinger, director of information technology, one of those tools could be the NCSBN ID number. 

What is it?  

The NCSBN ID is a unique nurse identifier, according to Sterzinger, and is used exclusively in nursing. The number is issued automatically by NCSBN during the NCLEX examination process, and it follows the nurse for their entire career.

"Typically, a nurse will go to a nursing education program," Sterzinger said. "They’ll take the NCLEX exam, and then after the exam, they're licensed by a state board of nursing, and then they can begin their career as a nurse."

The information attached to the ID number has to do with the nurse that it's assigned to. According to Schwartz, nurses might have licenses in single or multiple states, and they might have different kinds of licenses. The ID is associated with all of a nurse's licensure history and disciplinary history through the state boards.

"Through our work with the state boards, all of their different nursing licenses across jurisdictions and across license types are automatically linked to the NCSBN ID from their educational institutions, employers, etc.," Schwartz said. "If they're using the NCSBN ID, they have the power then to attach even more."

The data can be found through Nursys, a national database run by NCSBN that contains all of the nurse license and disciplinary information. According to Sterzinger, NCSBN has data sharing agreements through their membership with the state boards of nursing, and they all contribute their license and disciplinary information.

"As a result, we are able to take all that license information and tie it together with one individual," Sterzinger said, "and assign that unique nurse identifier."

In terms of privacy, the NCSBN ID itself is public. Sterzinger explained that there is a subset of license and disciplinary information which is considered to be public record, and users can go to the Nursys database to find that information. Sterzinger compared the NCSBN ID to a vehicle identification number, or VIN number, on a car.

"That identifier is tied to that car, and it is connecting all these different datasets and systems around the life of that car, and it's publicly available," Sterzinger said. "You can walk up to any car, and you can look through the front windshield and down in the dashboard and you can see that VIN."

What are the benefits?  

There are several use cases for the NCSBN ID, including use in education programs. According to Schwartz, the University of Alabama in Huntsville is using the ID to ensure that graduate students are maintaining active, current, and valid nursing licenses and tracking their success and their career pathways after they leave.

"With the NCSBN ID, it's possible for an education program to know what percentage of RN grads are going on to become APRNs, or what areas of the workforce they are ending up in," Schwartz said.

The ID can also be used to address workforce shortages and quantify the value of nursing. Nurses are involved in many different aspects of care delivery, Schwartz explained, but the data is captured in different systems, with no convenient way of sharing information.

"With the NCSBN ID, multiple systems can talk to each other, multiple data sets can be exchanged," Schwartz said, "but there's no personally identifying information that needs to travel."

For health systems, the NCSBN ID can help with screening and verification processes, and to make sure that nurses are keeping their licenses up to date. For CNOs specifically, Schwartz explained that the ID can be used to improve quality and training over time.

"If you're able to link the care provided by a specific nurse to a particular outcome over time, what you may find is [that] nurse is having more success than others," Schwartz said. "Are there things that that nurse is doing where we can provide training to other nurses, or perhaps if the outcomes are worse than average, is remediation or professional development needed to bring things on par with expectations?"

The NCSBN ID also provides value to the patient, according to Schwartz. Patients are able to look up their nurses and see their licenses and career history.

"Through Nursys and through the NCSBN ID, we improve upon the transparency of nursing care to the public, [and] to consumers as well," Schwartz said.

"There's a lot of studying going on regarding the nursing workforce, and aging, and where they’re coming from," Sterzinger said. "The NCSBN ID can be used to help researchers tie together different data sets and get those results so that we can make sure that we have a solid nursing workforce in the future."